


Who Knows One?

by Birdpeople (DeusExMachina)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam being Jewish is very important to me '~', Discussions of different religions, Jewish Adam, Jewish Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7301905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusExMachina/pseuds/Birdpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam shrugged. </p><p>“I don’t know about that. I once asked my Aunt Aviva if she believed in god. She said to me that the Jewish people have a special covenant with god. She said we don’t have to believe in him all of the time, as long as we never stop telling stories about him and we keep asking questions."</p><p>---<br/>Or: The one where Adam's mother's family is Jewish and he stayed with them for a summer a few years back and always meant to figure out exactly what that meant to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Knows One?

Adam always took care to seat himself all the way down on the left side of the couch, farthest from the door to the Barns’ living room, the better to hear people coming. Not that he had much to worry about; between Opal and Ronan, Adam was blessed with some of the noisiest housemates in existence.

It was Chainsaw who could sneak up on him the best. If he didn’t hear her claws tac-tac-tacking across the floor, she would ghost up behind him and make him jolt every time when she settled heavily on his shoulder. She’d pinch his ear in her beak as she rattled her wings, and then fold herself up like a prim little umbrella, chuckling and muttering in his good ear. She even consented to left Adam pet her sometimes, an outstretched finger tracing the line from beak to shoulders.

When Ronan flopped down on the couch, smelling of gritty hay and sweet grass, Chainsaw took off in a flurry of pinions, the tips of the her feathers sweeping Adam’s cheek as she let out an indignant squawk.

Adam obligingly lifted his book, allowing Ronan to lay his head in his lap.

“Hey,” Ronan said. Turning his head slightly, he nosed at Adam’s hip through the worn cotton of his tee shirt. Adam hummed. Freeing a hand from his book, he ran the pads of his fingers across Ronan’s shaved head.

“Lynch.”

“Parrish.”

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

“Is this the royal ‘we’ or are you counting birdbrain?”

Adam looked around exaggeratedly, indicating that Chainsaw had left the moment Ronan had shown up.

Ronan snorted. Reaching for Adam’s book, he demanded, “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Some of us more cultured folk who were not raised on farms call this ‘reading’, Ronan,” Adam said in his best imitation of Gansey’s most pompous voice. He let Ronan pull the book away from him.

“Ooooh, fancy college boy,” Ronan drawled.

Adam didn’t even try to disguise how happy the words made him. _College boy._ How long had he waited, how hard had he worked, and finally he could say that was him.

“Not for another couple of months,” Adam reminded him.

But Ronan wasn’t listening. Frowning, he held Adam’s book straight up in the air above where his head was still pillowed on Adam’s leg.

“What are you doing reading bible? Trying to find god before throwing in your lot with college debauchers? Because between the two of us, I don’t think you’re the sinner who should be worried about his immortal soul.”

Adam snatched the book back, lips pursed. “Jewish people don’t call it Bible, it’s the Torah. And they don’t really believe in an afterlife, either.”

“So what? Since when have you been Jewish?”

Adam’s silence betrayed him.

Ronan sat up, twisting around to face him. “No fucking way.”

“What?” Adam sounded uncomfortable.

Ronan laughed, leaning forward to cup Adam’s face in his hands. Adam, who had been staring down at the heavy book in his hands, let himself be guided until he was forehead to forehead with Ronan.

“Can I tell Declan? I bet he’d be thrilled that his good little Catholic brother, which he considers one of my sole redeeming features by the way, is dating a nice Jewish boy.”

Adam’s face broke into a reluctant smile. “Sole redeeming, soul-redeeming. Nice.”

Ronan grappled with Adam for a second, finally succeeding in getting him a headlock until Adam, sputtering and laughing, called uncle and Ronan released him.

Ronan resettled himself in Adam’s lap and Adam resumed tracing his fingers across the contours of Ronan’s skull.

“Really,” Ronan said more seriously. “What brought this on? Because twenty minutes ago I swear to god- no offense- that you weren’t Jewish.”

Adam shrugged. “My mom doesn’t practice, but her family is Jewish. And in Judaism it passes through your mother so _technically_ …”

Adam trailed off and Ronan stayed silent, giving him space, letting him marshal his thoughts.

“When I was thirteen,” Adam said finally, “My mom’s sister’s family offered to have my stay with them for the summer. My parents jumped at the chance for a couple of months alone and I was shipped off to Connecticut.”

Ronan remained silent, using the edge of a fingernail to trace patterns across Adam’s hip.

“They’re fairly religious. Conservative, Ashkenazi Jews, and it was my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah at the time. It was so weird. I went to synagogue with them every Saturday morning and every Friday night they made Shabbat, with the candles and the Challah and prayers and things. My cousins had been going to Hebrew school their whole lives and they told me that their family was like, middle-ground when it came to religiousness, even though they were more religious than anyone else I knew at the time. Like they kept kosher and had two sets of dishes and didn’t use electricity or drive anywhere on Shabbat but they would also go out and have dinner at restaurants sometimes.”

Ronan hummed to show he was still listening, still tracing patterns over Adam’s shirt.

“But it wasn’t the religious things I cared about. I don’t really know how to explain it. It was being surrounded by all of my cousins who live in that area every Saturday and have lunch in one huge mob at my Aunt Aviva’s house. It was my cousins trying to teach me how to write my name in Hebrew. It was my aunt offering me a blessing every Friday night like I was just another one of her kids. It was the people in the congregation asking me where I went to school and if I had had a Bar Mitzvah yet like I was entitled to one just the same as any of them.”

“Weird,” Ronan said. “It’s was kind of the opposite for me with Catholicism. I went with my mom and my brothers to church every Sunday and dad only went on holidays like Easter and Christmas, but that was always a separate thing from our daily lives.” Ronan hesitated. “Maybe that’s what we were doing wrong. Maybe for religion to work you have to live it all the time.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I once asked my Aunt Aviva if she believed in god. She said to me that the Jewish people have a special covenant with god. She said we don’t have to believe in him all of the time, as long as we never stop telling stories about him and we keep asking questions, keep questioning the way things are and the way things were, and we do or best to live by the mitzvot.”

Ronan looked thoughtful. “That sounds a lot more reasonable than a wrathful god who wants you to feel guilty every time you jerk off.”

Adam barked a laugh. “It’s just different.”

“So you’re brushing up on your Torah, then?”

Adam nodded. “I figure there will be other Jewish kids at school, and I want to know the right questions to ask.”

“Mm.” Ronan settled himself, hands behind his head. “Well, wake me up when you get to Bathsheba. That’s when things get interesting.”

Adam stared at Ronan. His eyes were closed. Moving carefully so as not to disturb him, Adam cupped a hand in the air above Ronan’s head and mouthed to himself, as well as he could remember, the prayer that his aunt had said over him every Friday night.

  
_May God bless you and guard you._   
_May God show you favor and be gracious to you._   
_May God show you kindness and grant you peace._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo I'm actually working on writing other fics for my headcanons, including this Sarchengsy roadtrip fic, but I guess this one got done first so here you go~
> 
> Tell me your headcanons in the comments or at my tumblr (quasi-birdpeople.tumblr.com)


End file.
